Longing for Gardening Season

I realized when I made my last post that it had been a long time since I updated this blog! So long, in fact, that the flowers were just starting to bloom.  Gardening season kept me really busy this past summer, I put in a full garden of herbs, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, apples and garlic.  I was almost a bit relieved when the first frost hit, as the amount of watering and weeding was beginning to get old.  But now that I’ve had a break and there is snow on the ground, I am missing the delicious taste of all that wonderful fresh fruit and veggies, and the sweet smell of all those flowers.  I have lots of photos, so I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve posted just a few for you to peek at!  Can’t wait for next year’s planting season! 🙂

 

Spring Gardening

Wow, gardening season has come on full force this year!  I usually busy myself with the two flower beds I have at the side of my house and in the front.  Last year, I planted a bunch of “perennials” (I use the quotations because some aren’t actually perennials – they just somehow reseed and survive every year) – calendulas, daisies, california poppies, as well as some tulips and peonies.  But this year, I ripped up some of the sod and put in a real vegetable garden!  It involved moving a lot of existing shrubs to different spots, but everything appears to have survived.  I also planted two more crabapples (hopefully the birds prefer those over the eating apples!) and another shade tree, a Toba Hawthorne which looks like a new variety of tree that is supposed to be hardy in Southern Alberta.  I’ve planted lettuce, carrots, beans, potatoes, onions, garlic, beets, tomatoes, herbs (dill, cilantro, rosemary, sage, basil), strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and haskap berries (a new type of berry I have never heard of!).  Things are starting to poke through now – I am sure with the sun starting to shine, I’ll be eating some fresh, home grown food in no time!  Here are a few pics, I will update the progress as  this experiment progresses!

Apple blossoms – there are tons this year. This “Combination Apple” (5 kinds of apples grafted on one tree) will have been planted for three years this summer, and it seems to finally be flourishing.

Toba Hawthorne – supposed to have small white flowers and turns golden yellow in the fall.

Lilac – this was a sapling from a tree in my parents yard that my dad dug up and transplanted. It’s survived a major, bark-stripping hailstorm that killed most of my trees and shrubs the first year I moved, and this year it looks like it will bloom for the first time!

Tulip – love the marbleized bud!

Tulips always surprise me – planting the bulbs in the fall, I forgot what colours I had purchased. I love these light pink ones that remind me of Easter!

More pink tulips 🙂

I had thought these ones would be red! But they turned out to be a fun marbleized yellow/red.

Garden markers… a little garden humour 🙂

More garden humour… couldn’t think of anything clever for potatoes though!

Summer Flowers

Wow, September 3rd already!  Hard to believe the summer has come and gone.  I haven’t blogged much lately, the summer keeps me too busy to try a lot of new recipes (outside of BBQ!) and I end up spending a lot of time doing yard work.

Just wanted to post a few pics of my flowers this year… things are starting to go to seed now, and what wasn’t destroyed by hail is starting to come back, but it won’t be long before the leaves will fall now, so I am not really putting too much effort into keeping it alive.  Although I will miss the beauty that this city has in the summer, I always look forward to cooler weather!  Must be the Canadian blood 😀

A lot of the flowers I planted this year were from seed… I’m trying to plant more flowers that are lower maintenance and come back year after year.  I don’t mind spending money on annuals but it is heartbreaking to see them destroyed by hail!!!  I love the calendulas and daisies.  And they are tougher than most fragile flowers, so they can handle a light frost!

Happy Fall!

 

Érables et pommiers // Maples and Apples

My two trees from last year needed to be replaced because the winter was really hard on them, apparently the weeks of warm spells followed by weeks of freezing temperatures are the hardest winters on trees.  The warm temperatures fool plants and trees into thinking it is spring, so they begin to come out of their dormant state… then the cold winter blasts kill them!  Last year was an El Nino year, which meant unusually warm temperatures… it seems like many of the trees in my neigbourhood did not make it.  My trees were under warranty, so I went back to the greenhouse to get replacement trees.  I replaced my Norway Maple with a Crimson King Norway Maple, which is essentially the same thing except the leaves are a deep purple and green instead.  I also had a Combination Apple, which I replaced with the same thing…  I love that tree, it’s basically 5 types of apples grafted on to one tree, which means that I don’t need a second apple tree to cross pollinate.  The apple tree I got already has a bunch of apples on it so here’s to hoping that we don’t have another killer storm that strips the bark off!  Ironically, I planted my Maple Tree on Canada Day… a true patriotic activity for our nation’s birthday!!!

Crimson King Norway Maple

Combination Apple

Apples!